The True and Honorable History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, the Good Lord Cobham.
Page: 60

And my Lord Bishop did lay search for such,
Were very willing to come on with me,
Lest for their sakes suspicion me might wrong.

JUDGE.
We cry your honor mercy, good my Lord,
Wilt please ye take your place. Madame, your ladyship
May here or where you will repose your self,
Until this business now in hand be past.

LADY POWIS.
I will withdraw into some other room,
So that your Lordship and the rest be pleased.

JUDGE.
With all our hearts: attend the Lady there.

LORD POWIS.
Wife, I have eyed yond prisoners all this while,
And my conceit doth tell me, tis our friend,
The noble Cobham, and his virtuous Lady.

LADY POWIS.
I think no less: are they suspected, trow ye,
For doing of this murder?

LORD POWIS.
What is means
I cannot tell, but we shall know anon.
Mean space as you pass by them, ask the question,
But do it secretly, you be not seen,
And make some sign that I may know your mind.

LADY POWIS.
My Lord Cobham? madam?

[As she passeth over the stage by them.]

COBHAM.
No Cobham now, nor madam, as you love us,
But John of Lancashire, and Ione his wife.

LADY POWIS.
Oh tell, what is it that our love can do,
To pleasure you? for we are bound to you.

COBHAM.
Nothing but this, that you conceal our names;
So, gentle lady, pass for being spied.

LADY POWIS.
My heart I leave, to bear part of your grief.

[Exit.]

JUDGE.
Call the prisoners to the bar. Sir Richard Lee,
What evidence can you bring against these people,
To prove them guilty of the murder done?

LEE.
This bloody towel and these naked knives,
Beside we found them sitting by the place,
Where the dead body lay, within a bush.

JUDGE.
What answer you why law should not proceed,
According to the evidence given in,
To tax ye with the penalty of death?

COBHAM.
That we are free from murder's very thoughts,
And know not how the gentleman was slain.

FIRST JUSTICE.
How came this linen cloth so bloody then?


LADY COBHAM.
My husband hot with travelling, my lord,
His nose gushed out a bleeding, that was it.

SECOND JUSTICE.
But wherefore were your sharp edged knives